How To Make Your Summer Vacation A Fun Learning Experience

Your children may be soaking up the summer sunshine and taking full advantage of their time off from school – but in grand parent fashion, you may need to remind them that summer isn’t a time to take a break from learning, even if they’re not going to school! Yes, that may go over like a ton of bricks, so it may be worth it to find some more stealthy ways to explore how to make your summer vacation a fun learning experience.

What can kids learn in their summer vacation? That’s a good question, but a more appropriate one may be: what can’t your kids learn? The world is literally their oyster – you simply have to keep them engaged in learning activities that are also fun to bring on some informal summer education and keep their skills sharp for the fall.

Here are a few ways you can make this summer the most fun, and the most informative, your kids have ever had!

How Should Students Spend Their Summer Vacation?
If you were to ask most kids how to spend their summer vacation, they’d probably include staying up late, sleeping in, swimming, and catching up on their favorite shows as vital must-dos, but you know better. Sure, all of that may be fun at first, but eventually, boredom will set in and kids will need something more engaging to do. So why not strive to get them involved in something that’s fun as well as informative?

You don’t have to give them homework – you just need to give them opportunities to learn so they don’t lose the math and reading skills they’ve learned over the school year.

What Can I Teach My Kids in Summer?
There are so many things you can teach your kids in summer! The key is to stay engaged with them. Remember: summer vacation isn’t like hitting the pause button on your child’s learning – it can be more like hitting the erase button. For some kids, a long summer break can actually erode the skills they learned over the school year.

It’s a very use-it-or-lose-it situation for your child, so work with them to help them find a balance between summer fun and reinforcing the skills they learn in the world of academia. How you do it is up to you, but we have some great suggestions you may want to try.

Fun Summer Learning Activities

A few things you can do with your child to help reinforce learning over the summer include:

• Cooking – A lot of kids will love the idea of learning to cook or bake over the summer. Plus, cooking deals with math and reading: the two big areas that kids need to keep their skills sharp. Get your children involved with meal planning and prep, bake cakes and cookies together, or have them follow a recipe and cook on their own if they’re old enough to be responsible in the kitchen by themselves.
• Join a reading club – Local libraries often have summer reading challenges kids can participate in, or you can find another local book club for kids to join. Reading over the summer is vital for children, and getting them involved in reading with others or as a part of a larger goal is a great way to keep them interested.
• Go on a trip – You don’t have to plan a grand summer vacation to have some fun and do a little learning. Field trips your family takes together to museums of all kinds can really make a difference in keeping them engaged. Art, history, and science museums should all be on your list. If you’re not within an easy distance of one, many museums have virtual online tours you can participate in.
• Play games – Family game nights are a great way to keep your children’s thinking muscles toned. The best part is that they may not even realize that’s what you’re trying to do because they’re having so much fun! Many board games require counting or reading in order to play, which is a wonderful activity for the whole fam.
• Write a book – Encourage your child to write their own stories, since writing is another key skill that tends to decline over the summer. If your child isn’t interested in being the next Stephen King, perhaps have them write a letter to a friend or family member, or keep a journal about their summer break. Even helping you to write out your grocery list each week is a step in the right direction!
• Help others – Learning comes in a variety of forms and research shows that many children learn better when they’re engaged in activities that help to hone their social–emotional development, such as volunteering in the community. Find a local service project or group they can volunteer with or have them help out friends and neighbors.
• Let them play – For younger children especially, a lot of learning takes place during play. Programs that involve intense physical activity have been found to have a positive impact on academics, such as helping with concentration. Find ways to keep your child active for at least 60 minutes each day. You can try playing games outside, jumping on trampolines, taking hikes or walks together, or going swimming. Sometimes simply putting a sprinkler out into the yard for them to jump through on a hot summer day can do the trick!

No matter how you spend your summer, don’t forget to seize any opportunity you can to help your child continue to learn. You’ll find they benefit from it when the new school year begins!

Featured image by Vitolda Klein on Unsplash